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Digswell Arts Trust
Digswell Arts Trust was the brainchild of Henry Morris, a pioneering educationalist. Through his enthusiasm, dedication and influence he persuaded the Government and the Welwyn Garden City Development Corporation to establish a Trust for professional artists in Welwyn Garden City, England. It was formally inaugurated by Countess Mountbatten on 29 May 1957. Early years Digswell House, a decayed Regency mansion with cottages and outbuildings on the edge of Welwyn Garden City, was the first home of the Trust. The house was leased to the Trust to provide accommodation and studios for artists at a modest rent. The first artists moved in at the end of 1957 and over the next 27 years nearly 150 were accommodated there. Some, including Michael Andrews, Ralph Brown, John Brunsdon, James Butler, Peter Collingwood, Hans Coper, Lol Coxhill, Elizabeth Fritsch and John W Mills have become internationally famous. Many other distinguished people including - Henry Moore, Herbert Read, ...
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Henry Morris (education)
Henry Morris (13 November 1889 – 14 December 1961) is known primarily as the founder of village colleges. He was the Chief Education Officer for Cambridgeshire for over thirty years, taking up the post in 1922 during a time of depression in the United Kingdom following the First World War. Early life Morris was born in Southport in Lancashire on 13 November 1889. At the age of fourteen he began work as an office boy at ''The Southport Visiter'', later becoming a reporter. In 1910 he moved to St David's University College, Lampeter to read for a degree in theology, and in 1912 moved to Exeter College, Oxford. At the outbreak of the First World War he volunteered for army service, and became an officer in the RASC. Following the end of the war he read moral sciences (philosophy) at King's College, Cambridge, graduating with a second-class degree in 1920.Cunningham, Peter"Morris, Henry (1889–1961)" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004 ...
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Hans Coper
Hans Coper (8 April 1920 – 16 June 1981), was an influential German-born British studio potter. His work is often coupled with that of Lucie Rie due to their close association, even though their best known work differs dramatically, with Rie's being less sculptural, while Coper's was much more abstract, but also always functional. The latter point was noted by M. S. Thomas in his recent book "The Essential Potness." Coper always made functional vessels, principally containers for flowers (vases), fruit (bowls), candles (candle holders) including work for Coventry Cathedral and Sussex University meeting house. He made a small group of Figures in the fifties, which were not vessels and were never put on sale (''see'' Tony Birks). Biography Coper was born in Chemnitz, Germany, and fled to Britain in 1939. He was interned as an enemy alien, and held in Canada for two years; on return to Britain in 1942, he served as a conscientious objector in the Non-Combatant Corps. In ...
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English Partnerships
English Partnerships (EP) was the national regeneration agency for England, performing a similar role on a national level to that fulfilled by regional development agencies on a regional level. On 1 December 2008 its powers passed to a successor body, the new Homes and Communities Agency. It was responsible for land acquisition and assembly and major development projects, alone or in joint partnership with private sector developers. It was particularly active in major regeneration areas such as the Thames Gateway and in expansion areas such as Milton Keynes, where the Deputy Prime Minister (acting as Environment Minister) removed planning from local control and appointed them as the statutory planning authority. It was a non-departmental public body funded through the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG), and was previously by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (the predecessor department to CLG). Structure English Partnerships was legally two entirely i ...
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Listed Building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency in Northern Ireland. The term has also been used in the Republic of Ireland, where buildings are protected under the Planning and Development Act 2000. The statutory term in Ireland is " protected structure". A listed building may not be demolished, extended, or altered without special permission from the local planning authority, which typically consults the relevant central government agency, particularly for significant alterations to the more notable listed buildings. In England and Wales, a national amenity society must be notified of any work to a listed building which involves any element of demolition. Exemption from secular listed building control is provided for some buildings in current use for worship, ...
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Roland Penrose
Sir Roland Algernon Penrose (14 October 1900 – 23 April 1984) was an English artist, historian and poet. He was a major promoter and collector of modern art and an associate of the surrealists in the United Kingdom. During the Second World War he put his artistic skills to practical use as a teacher of camouflage. Penrose married the poet Valentine Boué and then the photographer Lee Miller. Biography Early life Penrose was the son of James Doyle Penrose (1862–1932), a successful portrait painter, and Elizabeth Josephine Peckover, the daughter of Baron Peckover, a wealthy Quaker banker. He was the third of four brothers; his older brother was the medical geneticist Lionel Penrose. Roland grew up in a strict Quaker family in Watford and attended the Downs School, Colwall, Herefordshire, and then Leighton Park School, Reading, Berkshire. In August 1918, as a conscientious objector, he joined the Friends' Ambulance Unit, serving from September 1918 with the British Red ...
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Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read was co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts. As well as being a prominent English anarchist, he was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism. He was co-editor with Michael Fordham of the British edition in English of '' The Collected Works of C. G. Jung''. Early life The eldest of four children of tenant farmer Herbert Edward Read (1868-1903), and his wife Eliza Strickland, Read was born at Muscoates Grange, near Nunnington, about four miles south of Kirkbymoorside in the North Riding of Yorkshire. George Woodcock, in ''Herbert Read- The Stream and the Source'' (1972), wrote: "rural memories are long... nearly sixty years after Read's father... had died and the family had left Muscoates, I heard it ...
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Henry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi- abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Moore produced many drawings, including a series depicting Londoners sheltering from the Blitz during the Second World War, along with other graphic works on paper. His forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures. Moore's works are usually suggestive of the female body, apart from a phase in the 1950s when he sculpted family groups. His forms are generally pierced or contain hollow spaces. Many interpreters liken the undulating form of his reclining figures to the landscape and hills of his Yorkshire birthplace. Moore became well known through his carved marble and larger-scale abstract cast bronze sculptures, and was instrumental in introducing a particular form of modernism to the Unite ...
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John Mills (British Sculptor)
John William Mills (born 4 March 1933, London) is an English sculptor. He studied at Hammersmith School of Art, 1947–54, and at the Royal College of Art, 1956–60. He was a resident at Digswell House 1962–66, and currently lives at Hinxworth Place in Hertfordshire. Teaching Various part-time teaching posts in UK from 1958 to 1962: * Full-time at St. Albans School of Art and Hertfordshire College of Art and Design, 1962–77 * Visiting Associate Professor in Printmaking and Sculpture, Eastern Michigan University, 1970–71 * Visiting lecturer Detroit School of Creative Arts, 1970–71 * Visiting Professor and Artist in Residence University of Michigan, 1980. Awards * Fellow of the Royal British Society of Sculptors, 1982 * Otto Beit medal, Royal British Society of Sculptors, 1983 (for the sculpture 'Curved Neck Grace') * President of the Society, 1986, and again in 1997 * Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, 1993 * Honorary Master of Arts, University College Northam ...
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Elizabeth Fritsch
Elizabeth Fritsch CBE (born 1940) is a British studio potter and ceramic artist born into a Welsh family in Whitchurch on the Shropshire border. Her innovative hand built and painted pots are often influenced by ideas from music, painting, literature, landscape and architecture. Biography Elizabeth Fritsch is a studio potter and ceramic artist. She uses fine technically proficient hand built coiling techniques; architectural ceramic form, optical effects and surface design which, are usually hand painted with coloured slips. The stoneware are biscuit fired and often re-fired a number of times. Each Fritsch pot is unique, individual and distinctive. They are usually displayed in selected groups and themes set to the artist's requirements. Fritsch initially studied at the Birmingham School of Music studying harp, and then piano at the Royal Academy of Music from 1958 to 1964; but she later took up ceramics under Hans Coper and Eduardo Paolozzi at the Royal College of Art from ...
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Lol Coxhill
George Lowen Coxhill (19 September 1932 – 10 July 2012) known professionally as Lol Coxhill, was an English free improvising saxophonist. He played soprano and sopranino saxophone. Biography Coxhill was born to George Compton Coxhill and Mabel Margaret Coxhill (née Motton) at Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK. He grew up in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, and bought his first saxophone in 1947. After national service he became a busy semi-professional musician, touring US airbases with Denzil Bailey's Afro-Cubists and the Graham Fleming Combo. In the 1960s he played with visiting American blues, soul and jazz musicians including Rufus Thomas, Mose Allison, Otis Spann, and Champion Jack Dupree. He also developed his practice of playing unaccompanied solo saxophone, often busking in informal performance situations. Other than his solo playing, he performed mostly as a sideman or as an equal collaborator, rather than a conventional leader – there was no regular Lol Coxhill Trio or ...
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Peter Collingwood
Peter Trevor Collingwood (6 May 1920 – 23 September 2016) was an English-born actor who appeared in theatre roles, films, miniseries and serials from 1938 to 2003 in his native England and Australia. Collingwood was known for his portrayal of judges, military men and upper-crust befuddled types. He was also a playwright. Biography Early life Collingwood was born in Kent(some sources give, Farnham, Surrey), England on 6 May 1920. He enrolled in the Embassy School of Acting at the Embassy Theatre, London, in 1937. His first professional acting job was in Wang Shifu's Chinese play '' The Western Chamber'' at London's Torch Theatre in 1938. Navy service During the Second World War, Collingwood served in the British Navy, including on the Greek submarine as liaison officer, but was discharged due to eye sight problems. Theatre and film roles After the war, Collingwood joined Amersham Repertory Theatre, followed by the Young Vic Company, and a number of other companies. In ...
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Welwyn Garden City
Welwyn Garden City ( ) is a town in Hertfordshire, England, north of London. It was the second garden city in England (founded 1920) and one of the first new towns (designated 1948). It is unique in being both a garden city and a new town and exemplifies the physical, social and cultural planning ideals of the periods in which it was built. History Welwyn Garden City was founded by Sir Ebenezer Howard in 1920 following his previous experiment in Letchworth Garden City. Howard had called for the creation of planned towns that were to combine the benefits of the city and the countryside and to avoid the disadvantages of both. It was designed to be 'The Perfect Town'. The Garden Cities and Town Planning Association had defined a garden city as "a town designed for healthy living and industry of a size that makes possible a full measure of social life but not larger, surrounded by a rural belt; the whole of the land being in public ownership, or held in trust for the community ...
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